RPG a Day 2015 Challenge – Day 28

Before everything else, a quick tropical storm Erika update: I’m ok! You can sleep better knowing I will finish my posts for #RPGaDay2015. Here in Puerto Rico we were lucky the storm was disorganized and ended up moving south of us. We have various municipalities without power, there was some flooding, but we didn’t suffer any major consequences. Erika is now moving towards our neighbor the Dominican Republic; I hope they are as fortunate as us. Sadly, the effects of Erika were terrible in Dominica… Predictive models have it arriving in Florida as a hurricane, everybody stay safe! Now, on to the post…

Day 28 – Favorite game you no longer play

This game has made previous appearances this year for #RPGaDay2015 as well as last year, Star Frontiers. This game was my first sci-fi game after playing D&D, I remember getting the box, coloring the dice with the crayon, and it was an easy transition from fantasy to science fiction. Through high school I played as much Star Frontiers as D&D. It was my first long term sci-fi campaign. I played a solo game with a neighbor for months; we played it at lunch in school for about two years. I even had two parallel campaigns running with intertwined storylines.

I integrated ideas from Atari Force, lots of NPCs looked like characters from Marvel comics at the time, they were NOT the characters, but I used the art as reference. Back then before the Internet I didn’t have Google to look for references imaged. I would cut out images from magazines, use tracing paper to copy art from the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe and them draw sci-fi uniforms on and use them as NPC portraits. This was one long uninterrupted campaign that lasted almost four years. Sadly we never finished the story. The players were on their way deep into Sathar space to confront their enemies once and for all, and we never played that…

I hate unfinished campaigns, but back then in the early 1990s, we were in a gaming binge, we’d jump from new game to new game and we simply abandoned Star Frontiers. I’ve considered going back, but the players all moved and left the island. I’ve also toyed with the idea of running a Star Frontiers game again, but despite my fond memories of the rules, I don’t know if I could use them as is.

Besides I’ve used many of the ideas from that campaign in an Alternity sci-fi game, in my Tri Stat dX sci-fi game and a few in my current Wanderers of the Outlands game. I look back at Star Frontiers through rose colored glasses, it’s my favorite game I no longer play, but I’m happy with my current Savage Worlds campaign and it has a lot to do with the lessons I learned playing this game.

What is your favorite game you no longer play? Let us know in the comments. Thanks to everybody who reached out through social media and your well wises about the storm. See you all tomorrow!

8 comments

Johnkzin August 28, 2015 19:59

This one is easy for me to answer: I haven’t been actively gaming in a couple years, so all of my favorite games fall into this category 😛

But lets set aside that if I was actively gaming, I’d be playing D&D/Pathfinder, Mutant Chronicles, and/or some FATE game.

Setting those aside, here’s my favorite games I no longer play:

MERP and/or RoleMaster — before I developed my aversion to heavy-ish systems, Rolemaster was a favorite of mine. And when I wanted to “go light”, I used MERP without the “Middle Earth” part. Similarly, SpaceMaster and Cyberspace fit into here as my way of having a full span of tech levels and settings.

Shadowrun — probably the cyberpunk system I played the most (I really used Cyberspace more as a light-Sci-Fi system than for Cyberpunk specifically). I even developed my own little mini-campaign around the San Diego, CA area (where I’m from, but I was living/gaming in the Atlanta area at the time). I called it San DIEZ (the San Diego Independent Economic Zone; sort of a mix of West Berlin and Hong Kong, with South West US sensibilities in a Shadowrun world).

Gamma World and Aftermath — I preferred Aftermath as rules, but I tended to be more on the fantastic Gamma World end of the post-apocalyptic settings instead of the more gritty Mad Max end of the spectrum.

Stormbringer — my favorite of the Basic RPG line (more than Call of Cthulhu). I loved how they handled demons and virtues and agents of law or agents of chaos. I actually never read the Elric books (so I don’t know the _true_ setting), but I _loved_ the way the RPG expressed the setting. And I loved the novel game ideas and game mechanics they put into that expression of the setting. I still try to think of “how would I do their version of demons and virtues in my current game’s mechanics” when I start to work with any particular game.

Going with how much I actually played the game, RoleMaster would be the pinnacle of “Favorite RPG I no longer play”. Going with my over-all love of the game itself (rules, setting, etc.), but independent of how much time I actually spent playing it … probably Stormbringer. But it’s hard to say.

Sunglar August 28, 2015 22:18

That’s a nice list… I briefly played Rolemaster but preferred MERP myself. Wish I had the books, I gave them a way to a friend who was a big Middle Earth fan. San DIEZ sound slike fun… I worked for a company out of San Diego once, went there many times, loved it. Have never played either Aftermath of Stormbringer.

Johnkzin August 28, 2015 23:40

Stormbringer was later renamed “Elric!” I think. In case you ever wanted to look it over, or had played that edition of the rules.

Johnkzin August 28, 2015 20:29

(and I’m glad you’re ok; I always forget that you’re in PR … for some reason I always associate this blog with Germany, even though I know not everyone who writes for this blog is over there)

Sunglar August 28, 2015 22:21

We are forded to toil in German time and under their conditions, but we don’t all live there… Just kidding! That’s ok, thankfully we escaped the worst of the storm. The Lesser Antilles were hard hit, apparently the Dominican Republic as well. That’s not to say we didn’t get anything, specially in the mountains in the west there was a lot of rain, and some friends of mine had trees pulled doff the ground in their property, but no loss of live. We didn’t get the much needed rain though… We are going through a pretty brutal drought.

Johnkzin August 28, 2015 23:42

Rhetorical Question: who _doesn’t_ have a brutal drought right now? (ok, I know of a few places, like the north east US that had a major snow storm 9 months ago that probably filled up all of their water systems; but it seems like everyone else is dealing with one water shortage or another)

Voidman September 2, 2015 11:58

Fav game no longer played: Call of Cthulhu on par with Warhammer FRPG

@ Johnkzin rhet question
Not here in the UK. 🙂 Raining all over – “Summer’s over man! It’s over!”

Sunglar September 2, 2015 18:41

Voidman I wish I played more CoC… We are suddenly getting rain as well, not officially off the drought BUT the water supplies are rising.

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